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The old house aficionados in that group are a wild and wooly bunch who really know how to have a good time!

After a recent blog on the “GVT Tower House” in Herndon and some very interesting banter amongst the night owls, Rachel Shoemaker and I started poking around the small town of Herndon (via Bing Maps) to see what else we could find.

Unfortunately, a surfeit of trees prevented us from seeing much, but I discovered a Sears Winona (seriously altered by a lot of remodeling) and Rachel found the crème de la crème of kit homes, The Gordon Van Tine, “Brentwood.”

Amongst the trees and bushes of Herndon, we discovered a Sears Winona (1916 catalog).

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It's a fairly crummy image snagged off Bing Maps, but it's almost certainly a Sears Winona. From the five-piece eave brackets to the original porch railing and porch roof, it's a fine match.

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And here's the find of the MONTH! The Gordon Van Tine "Brentwood" (Model 711).

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And you thought "kit homes" were just crummy little boxes?

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Admittedly, it is somewhat unusual for mail-order houses to have a "Maid's Room."

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The typical mail-order kit home had 12,000 pieces and was shipped by train to its destination. The pieces and parts were carefully sorted and stacked, and would usually fit in a single boxcar. I suspect the GVT Brentwood took two boxcars!i

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And there it is, in the flesh, a perfect Gordon Van Tine #711. Rachel Shoemaker flew her little Bing Airplane over top of the house and confirmed (by viewing the back side) that it is indeed a GVT 711.

Yesterday, I wrote a blog, asking who’d sent me a photo of a purported Sears House.

Weeks (or months) after I’d told the sender that it wasn’t a Sears House, I discovered that it was a kit house, from Gordon Van Tine!

Gordon Van Tine (based in Davenport, Iowa) was a competitor of Sears, and also sold entire kit homes through a mail-order catalog. The house was shipped by boxcar (with 12,000 pieces of house), and each kit came with a 75-page instruction book.

Last night, Tina replied to my inquiry and said it was she who’d sent me the original image, and that the house (in Herndon, VA) had been listed for sale as a Sears Maytown (oopsie).